


What the Ghosts Want

by Atlblue31



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, M/M, POV Alternating, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2019-08-28 22:33:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16731894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atlblue31/pseuds/Atlblue31
Summary: He was important to him, once. He can’t remember why.…In 1945, Captain Steven Grant Rogers and Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes fell to their deaths in the Alps.Only, they didn’t completely die. Who doesn’t love a good ghost story?





	1. Chapter 1

_Bucky! Grab my hand!_

_NO!_

Alpha wakes with a jolt. _A memory_ , he thinks. He mustn't tell the Komandir. That, he reckons with himself, will only lead to The Chair. Alpha instinctively shivers at the memory of The Chair. No. He must hold onto the memory. It must have been important once. It must have been from Before.

There is no face associated with the memory. Only a shapeless body, clothed in deep blue. Alpha strains to remember more, but it is useless. Frustrated, he hangs his head in his hands.

“Soldat!” barks the Komandir. “Up!”

Alpha stands straight as an arrow, when he is bombarded with another thought from Before.

_Hiya, Buck._

It is the same voice, from the previous memory. The same shapeless body. This shapeless body must be important. 

_Bucky_ , his memory tells him. 

He needs to remember more. _It is vital_ , he thinks, _to find this Bucky. Bucky_ , his mind supplies. _BuckyBuckyBuckyBucky_

“Bucky,” he whispers.

He immediately regrets it. The Komandir narrows his eyes in loathing. Alpha curses himself. This was important. A precious memory from Before, one that he couldn’t afford to lose. 

“Wipe him,” snarls the Komandir.

Suddenly, hands are on him, forcing him into The Chair. 

“BUCKY!” he screams urgently. “BUCKY! BUCKY!”

Hands clamp his mouth shut. He is resigned to his fate. Ultimately, he is disappointed. He wanted to remember more of this Bucky, who must have been important once. 

As the restraints are positioned on his arms and legs, his mind supplies him with an image:

Steel blue eyes.

“Activate the chair,” an aide says from somewhere offhand.

Alpha screams.

 

…

 

“Jesus Christ,” Clint mutters. “It’s like...like Hydra threw a party and instead of cleaning everything up, they just decided to trash the place.”

“Hmm,” Natasha hums noncommittally. She traipses across the debris of what appears to be a chair of some sort, with electrical wires strewn around it, as if it were being choked. 

“Found some bodies, guys. Hydra goons, it looks like.” crackles a voice over the comm.

“Where are you, Tony?” she asks sharply.

“At your three o'clock, Romanoff. Fourteen feet behind. Shit...the bodies are still warm. Looks like someone got here just before us.”

“Who could have gotten here before us?” scoffs Clint as he rounds a corner. “We only found out about this facility yesterday. The only people who know about it are us, Fury, Coulson, and Hill. Besides, we don’t know whether this facility…” he trails off as he noticed the cell, sitting loftily in the corner, as if Hydra wasn’t sure whether to flaunt it or hide it. Inside were two chambers, doors ajar. They had been stuffed with Hydra agents, killed execution-style and covered in blood, bullets piercing their temples.

“Holy shit,” Clint hisses.

“What?” asks Tony.

Natasha walks into the room, eyes ablaze, as she stops in front of the chambers. 

“I know who these chambers belonged to,” she said evenly.

Clint rounds on her. “Who?

“Anyone want to fill me in on what’s going on?” Tony drawls sarcastically.

Ignoring him, Natasha continues. “Most of the intelligence community doesn't believe they exist. The ones that do call them the Winter Soldiers. They’re credited for over two dozen assassinations in the last 50 years.”

Clint raises his eyebrows at her, but doesn’t press her. He’d heard of them once before, in a reconnaissance mission. He’d been the one to retrieve Nat after she’d been shot through the stomach. Fury’d made a calculated guess, that the sniper was one of them. He hadn’t heard anything on the matter since, but, he surmises from the faint glint in Natasha’s eyes, she had. 

“How do you know that they were in these chambers?”

“These are cryogenic chambers, used to preserve bodies in cryostasis. The Winter Soldiers are believed to have received a version of the serum used in Project Rebirth, allowing them to be frozen and thawed. It would explain the long time period between kills.”

“Okay, so where are they now?” Tony asks as he approaches the cell.

“Wouldn’t surprise me if in the mess of things with the downfall of SHIELD, the guys assigned to them got careless, and they snapped. It would explain the bodies,” Natasha says matter-of-factly. 

Suddenly, footsteps approach. The three freeze, dead quiet in fear.

“Fuck,” Tony whispers. “You wouldn’t think that would happen to be them, do you?”

With her gun drawn, Natasha tiptoes towards the corner, not daring to make sound. Usually, Clint was impressed by how silent she could be, but right now, there were more pressing issues.

Like the man dressed in a strappy black combat uniform with muzzle covering his face, wielding an automatic rifle.

Clint draws his bow, ready for an attack, when the assassin crumples to the floor. Behind him stands Agent Hill, with a dart gun hanging lazily in her left hand.

“Your backup has arrived,” she says, smirking. “I tranqed him--Coulson got his partner.”

“Why tranq? Why not, I don’t know, kill them?” Tony demands.

“They’re the ones who started to tear this place apart for us. Must have finally remembered that they were people, not killing machines. Funny little coincidence, that as soon as we want to destroy this place, the Winter Soldiers have already done it for us. Besides,” she says, pausing to look at the soldier on the ground. “The enemy of the enemy is my friend.”

...

As Tony helped pull the Winter Soldiers onto the quinjet, he couldn’t help but stare longingly at the tech on the brunette’s arm. 

“Is his arm completely metal?” he asked Hill.

“It appears so.”

Tony stared curiously at the two soldiers laid out in front of him, sedated for the ride. They were massive--freaks of nature, really. One was slightly larger, and had dirty blond hair that reached to his chin. The other, a brunette, had greasy hair to his shoulders and a bulky metal arm. Other than that, they were identical. They were dressed in identical tactical gear, carried identical weapons, and had identical goggles and muzzles that obscured their identities. 

“Can they even breathe through those things?” Clint asked.

“Yes, their breathing levels are normal,” replied an on-flight doctor. 

“Take ‘em off. I want to see what they look like,” Tony said.

Maria looked at him pointedly. “We should really wait until we report back to Director Fury,” she replied.

“Well, I think that it’s important to see who we’re up against. Y’know, to see if they have red eyes, or a Voldemort nose, or something.”

Maria sighed. “Fine, but you have to keep watch over them first.”

Tony grinned up at her. “Sounds like a deal, Agent. Romanov, would you like to do the honors?”

She gingerly removed the goggles and muzzle off of both of them, making sure not to further injure them or aggravate the bruises they had sustained during the fight with Hydra. 

With their faces bare, they looked...normal. No odd Hydra face tattoos or empty voids for eye sockets. Just faces that were littered in bruises and cuts, dark circles filling out under their eyes. 

Something about them looked oddly familiar. He wondered if under the litany of scars and bruises, they would be recognizable. Tony frowned at the two, trying to discern where he had seen their faces. _Christ Tony_ , he told himself. _When would you have ever seen these men before?_

Snorting to himself, Tony turned away from the two soldiers. “You’ve really lost it now, Stark.”

 

...

He had heard a visceral scream. A scream, which only meant that they were going to put Alpha in The Chair. But, they couldn’t put Alpha in The Chair, because that would mean Alpha getting hurt. Alpha getting hurt went against the voice in his head. The voice that told him, _you protect this._

Alpha was important to him, once. He can’t remember why. 

Beta had charged through the cell, which the incompetent new aides had forgotten to lock.

_Bless their hearts_ , the voice had said. 

Beta had known that the voice wouldn’t return. The Chair would make him lose the voice. But, how he longed for the voice. The voice provided comfort. Comfort that he hadn’t always been this way. Comfort that he had been happy once. Comfort that the Alpha had been happy, too. The voice told him that the Alpha was warmth, was kindness. Was love.

And so, Beta had done what was required of him to do. What the voice insisted upon. He’d struck the man who had forced Alpha into the chair with his metal arm, and with his flesh arm, he’d shot at the aide who had put the wiring on Alpha’s head. The chair thankfully had not turned on yet. Beta’d nodded to Alpha, who had rushed into the cell to obtain his weapons. Thankfully, the new aides had not thought to lock them away.

Beta had taken great pleasure in killing the people who had locked him away. He usually did not take pleasure in missions, but this was not a mission. _It is free will_ , the voice had told him. He’d wrapped up The Chair tight in its wiring, so as to say to the Alpha, _it can’t hurt you anymore._

Alpha had returned from the chamber (cold, cold, so cold) covered in blood. Beta had reasoned that the new aides had met their expiration. The Alpha had nodded towards Beta, satisfied by the job he had done with the chair. 

_I had him on the ropes_ , the voice had said.

Beta had then leaned his forehead to Alpha’s. _You are safe now. I won’t let you get hurt._ He’d reached for Alpha’s hand, intertwining their fingers. 

“Safe,” he’d whispered. 

Nodding once more, Alpha had set off back to the cell, to see if there were more agents there.

Suddenly, Beta had crumpled to the ground in a heap.

...

 

Natasha watched carefully as the two soldiers awoke. 

The brunette one awoke first. He gazed around disoriented for a few seconds, before hurtling himself at the wall of the confinement room. (Fury was adamant about not calling it a cell. They weren’t prisoners; simply house guests in the basement of Avengers Tower.)

“Stand down, soldier,” Fury commanded, glaring at the wild man. 

The soldier did not stand down. He pounded the walls with his fists, howling, but not speaking. Never speaking. He looked at her with haunted eyes. She gave him a calculated stare in return. 

She had been in that position, once. A brainwashed victim. 

Stark had asked Fury why the soldiers were being kept. “What use could you possibly have for them?” he’d sneered.

“We have the opportunity to make great use of them, whether that be for their information regarding Hydra, or of their skills in the field,” he’d replied.

But Natasha knew the real reason. It was because Fury had a heart--for better or for worse, he believed in second chances. He had for her. 

She couldn’t say whether it was the moral thing to do, but the information that the two possessed had the potential to save lives. When the Avengers became aware of HYDRA’s stronghold within SHIELD, the disorganization and misinformation surrounding the situation had cost them at least a month. Agents that Natasha had considered trusting once before were revealed to be HYDRA, which her mandated therapist had said was contributing to her current state of distrusting everything. At this point, she was more inclined to trust the civilian she’d come across in DC than fellow agents, which is how the man named Sam Wilson came into the Avenger’s lives. He wasn’t official, but he was a good resource. His VA experience could come in handy with the soldier’s addled minds. 

The blond soldier awoke a few hours after the brunette. He had a similar reaction. He’d pounded on the walls, screaming. The brunette, in the next room, had an immediate reaction, and pounded on the walls, trying to tear apart the cement. They had howled for hours, until finally Coulson had the decency to sedate them. 

“Maybe we should put them in the same room,” Phil suggested softly. 

“Are you insane?” Clint asked. “They’d kill each other the moment they saw one another.”

“I’m not so sure.” Phil said. “Before...Before I tranqed the one with the metal arm, I saw him...embrace the other. I think they had a sort of bond.”

Fury looked bewildered, then looked at Natasha, seeking her opinion.

“I think that they should be together. Companionship could make their recovery quicker,” she said.

_It was settled; the two deadliest assassins of the 20th century were now roomates_ , Natasha thought wryly.

Through the next five days, the two did not speak. Instead, they communicated with each other in a series of taps. Natasha considered Morse code, but to no avail. She surmised it was a private language developed by HYDRA. It greatly confused the agents who guarded them. 

Daily, they were given a physical examination to take in the effects of the potentially decades of abuse. The initial exam showed almost no signs of physical trauma, which left the doctors astonished but almost confirmed Natasha’s theory of the serum that had once been given to Captain America. The head doctor theorized that they were suffering through drug withdrawals, but their blood didn’t test for anything. Bruce, who was another adherent to the serum theory, pointed out that it wouldn’t with the serum. Throughout the whole medical ordeal, both soldiers regarded the doctors in a solemn, unfocused silence, which further worried the doctors. Whispers of PTSD and psychosis permeated through the med labs, which prompted Fury to send in a psychiatrist into the cell. The first day, the soldiers scared the psychiatrist away with their dual dead-eyed stares. She hadn’t come back. 

They took turns sleeping, presumably to keep watch of any threats. The cell was fairly well sized and allowed for two twin beds, but privately, Natasha thought two were a waste of funding when they were only using one. When they did sleep, one would curl his head on the others’ thigh, in a gesture Natasha recognized as a cry of _I’m here. We’re safe._ The other would stay stock still, barely blinking as he stared at the surrounding guards. 

They would wake up with nightmares at least twice a night each. The process was like clockwork; the shaking would start, then the tormented bellows, until they were hoarse. Finally, the sobs would wrack their bodies, until the other would wake him up. They calmed each other down, patting the other awkwardly on the head until the sobbing had stopped.

Every day, the psychologists insisted on removing them from each other’s company for an hour, to try to shed their odd sort of codependency. Every day, they would meet incessant screams. Privately, Natasha disagreed with this practice. They seemed to be codependent out of necessity. Sure, it was facilitated by HYDRA, but the soldiers seemed to enjoy each other’s company. Every time, she wondered how long they had been each other’s only company. Were there any other Winter Soldiers? Or were these two broken would-be men the only barriers between insanity from lack of human contact?

If Natasha wasn’t so heavily guarded with her emotions, perhaps she’d cry. 

...

 

Alpha stopped screaming. 

They had removed Beta from his cell again. They did it every day. Presumably in a form of torture. 

For the first few days, Alpha had screamed the entire time he was gone. But yesterday, he grew hoarse long before Beta returned. And he had still returned. So, Alpha decided against screaming. To see if they would still bring Beta back. If he hadn’t returned in an hour, he’d start to scream again.

A guard that he’d never seen before, who looked like a ghost from long ago, approached the cell.

“So, blondie, finally decided to stop screaming? Don’t worry, they’re not gonna do anything bad to Robocop over there. I’m Tony Stark, by the way. Pleasure to meet you.”

Stark.

_Don’t worry, Steve, this old thing? It’ll fly fine._

(who was Steve?)

“What am I talking about? You don’t talk. Can you even talk? You sure can scream, so.”

Alpha frowned. This man, the one who looked like a ghost from long ago, talked too fast.

“I can,” the Alpha grumbled.

The man straightened up. “It’s a pleasure to hear your voice. It’s only slightly less gravely than an old driveway in Nebraska.” He smiled indulgently. “You got a name, Blondie?”

(Steve?)

“I don’t...don’t remember,” Alpha (Steve?) whispered.

“That’s okay. We figured as much. Nat got a few files, yadda yadda yadda, basically we found out that the chair wiped you clean.”

Alpha shuddered at the mention of The Chair. 

“So, we’re all dying to know...what happened over at the facility?” 

Alpha (Steve?) paused, for several seconds. 

“We were out of The Chair for too long. I started to remember,” Alpha (Steve?) whispered.

Startled, the man who looked like a ghost from long ago looked down at him. “What did you remember?” he asked quietly.

Alpha swallowed, not knowing if this privilege, the privilege of sharing his memories, of keeping his memories, was allowed. 

The man nodded encouragingly. Alpha darted his eyes around, and satisfied that there were no other eyes on him, continued.

“I remembered...Bucky. He was important to me once.”

 

...

“Bucky,” chuckled Tony. He glanced back at the translucent face before him, the pale blue eyes wide in confusion. “Not a very common name. Only Bucky I know of ‘s from history. Captain America’s best friend.”

The soldier cocked his head to the side, eyes widening.

Tony’s father had loved to tell stories about the two. He heard the story so much, he’d rehearsed the spiel: Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers, two of the best men he’d ever met. They died tragically in the Alps, only a few months before the end of the war. His dad even helped create the shield that made Captain Rogers into Captain America. It was his greatest creation. 

That’s probably why Howard had indulged Tony of his obsession with the Captain America comics when he was young. He had the limited edition prints, the posters, and the underwear, if you took it from Pepper. He told everyone that he’d grown out of it once he’d turned eleven, but the obsession only turned into fascination. As his dad was friends with Peggy Carter, he always tried to pry the juicy details of Cap’s life out, but she was always hesitant and guarded. The Commandos didn’t like to talk about them, either. At first, Tony thought it was because they felt overshadowed, but as he got older, he realized it was the grief that constrained them. 

It was crazy to think that these guys probably had a bastardized version of that same serum Captain America got.

Tony glanced back at the soldier in front of him. He even kind of looked like--

Tony felt his heart quicken. Blood pounding in his ears, he stared directly at the man in front of him. 

He looked just like Captain America.

Trying to maintain some semblance of composure, he smiled at the Captain America look-alike. “It was nice talking to you, buddy, but I’ve got urgent matters. See you later, pal,” he said quickly, the words burning in his mouth. 

He was being irrational, Tony thought. Captain America died 70 years ago. _He fell off a fucking mountain._ There is no way in hell that is actually Captain America.

He caught sight of the other soldier, being guided back into the cell---

It was Bucky Barnes.

Tony blinked. Perhaps he was hallucinating. Yeah, that was the explanation. He was seeing the faces of his dead comic book heroes on these two sad sap prisoners who just so happened to have coincidentally the same serum pumping inside of them, and who sprung up just as Captain America and Sergeant Barnes died. _Holy fuck_. Tony broke into a brisk pace towards where Coulson had set up camp. 

“Coulson. Fuck. I need to see your Captain America trading cards.”

“Uh, why?” Coulson asked politely.

“Right now, Jesus H. Christ, Phil. Right. Fucking. Now.”

Frowning, Coulson carefully handed a stack of cards to Tony. “These are mint condition. What are you going to do with them? If you’re going to do anything, I need to come with you,” he said insolently.

He looked down at the cards. There stared back the faces of the two captives, albeit much less haunted. He felt as if his heart was going to pound out of his chest. He was going to hurl.

“Come with me. Right now.”

He sprinted towards the elevators, not caring about the stares he was getting.

“Floor 10,” he heaved.

“What the hell is going on? You look like you’re about to have an asthma attack,” Coulson said worriedly. 

He clutched the cards to him as he exited the elevator, Phil on his heels. 

“JARVIS, scan this card and match it to detainee number one.”

He saw Phil tense beside him.

“Sir, I have calculated that detainee one has 98% facial match to Rogers, Steven Grant,” JARVIS said cheerfully.

If Phil looked five seconds away from a seizure or apoplectic fit, Tony had no idea what he looked like.

“Scan this card and match it to detainee number two,” Tony breathed shakily, already knowing the answer.

“Detainee two has a 99% facial match to Barnes, James Buchanan.”

_What the fuck?_

...

Nick J. Fury was proud to say that nothing could surprise him. Especially not after the whole Loki incident, and especially not after the whole “SHIELD is HYDRA” incident.

Well, until Tony Stark barged into his guest bedroom in Avenger Tower.

(Which, Stark owned. But still.)

“What the fuck?” spluttered Fury, startled by his sudden appearance.

He looked pale as a sheet, and Coulson, who was trailing him, looked no better. “You two look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“We’ve seen two,” whispered Coulson.

“What the hell has gotten into you, Phil?”

“We’ve discovered the identities of the two detainees downstairs.”

“And?”

“Captain Steve Rogers and Sergeant Bucky Barnes,” choked Phil.

Nick squinted at Coulson. He couldn’t believe Stark’d convinced him to play along with another prank. He would have expected Barton, sure, but with Barton out in Maine since Tuesday, he supposed the duties lie with someone else.

“Quit pulling my chain, Stark. Some of us have work to do.”

“I’m not lying. It’s really Barnes and Rogers.”

Nick stared at him. He was really going to take this thing far. Sighing, Nick turned back to him. 

“Barnes and Rogers died 70 years ago after they fell thousands of feet in the Alps. Frankly, I think it’s disrespectful to use two national icon’s legacies as a prank, especially to fool me into thinking that they were infamous assassins for decades. And I expect better out of you Phil, than to go along with a Tony Stark prank.”

“JARVIS, replay back the results of the facial scan,” Tony said breathlessly.

“Certainly. Detainee one has a 98 percent facial match to Rogers, Steven Grant. Detainee two has a 99 percent facial match to Barnes, James Buchanan.”

Nick’s mind reeled. It was impossible. Utterly impossible. Captain America, one of America’s most beloved national figures, could not have turned into a brainwashed super-assassin by the very organization he strove to defeat. SHIELD could not have failed him and Bucky Barnes this much. 

“The timeline matches up,” Stark said quietly. “The kills are credited over the last fifty years. They both had the serum, probably survived the damn fall because of it, Hydra found them in the snow, and fucked them up.”

Nick looked heavily down at his hands. They had failed America’s Captain and his loyal sidekick. He’d grown up in a state of hero worship for the Howling Commandos, and a solemn respect for the two fallen soldiers. Hell, half the reason he’d joined SHIELD was because of Captain America. And here he was, a lost, helpless amnesiac, all because HYDRA was operating right under his now. 

“Also,” Stark continued, “I know it’s them because detainee one… Steve Rogers told me that he started to remember Bucky. The memory...that’s why they destroyed the facility,” he concluded.

Nick looked up at Tony. “Call the other Avengers down here. They’ll want to hear this.”

...

When Clint walked in the room after being summoned from Monhegan, he saw three faces, each one looking as if they were on the verge of tears or vomiting, or maybe both. 

“What’s goin’ on?” he asked, glancing at Sam Wilson, who was standing to his left.

Gathered around the table were all of the Avengers, sans Thor. Probably dealing with his goddamn brother, Clint thought darkly.

“We’ve discovered the identities of the detainees,” Nick said.

“Okay, so who are these assassins?” Nat asked with a raised eyebrow.

Fury exhaled. “Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. Better known as Captain America and the Fallen Commando.”

Clint blinked. What. He was sure he had misheard Fury. “Like, their clones?”

Fury shook his head. “No. The real Cap and Barnes.”

The group on the side opposite Coulson, Fury, and Stark went into mayhem. Hill blinked, unsure whether this was a joke or not. Sam’s jaw fell open like a cartoon. Tasha’s face remained surprisingly calm, but her eyes darted to each man opposite her. 

“But how?” demanded Sam.

“Rogers told me that he had remembered Barnes when they had destroyed the Hydra facility. I guess he lashed out or something at the memory. He mentioned the name Bucky, and it just sparked my memory. I thought of Bucky Barnes, and then I noticed that Blondie looks just like my Captain America comics, so I got Phil’s trading card and did facial recognition,” Tony trailed off.

Clint looked at the floor. This was insane. 

“We wanted to brief all of you so we could discuss what to do next. So, what’s our play? We can’t just keep two of America’s greatest war heroes locked up in Stark’s Basement,” Coulson interjected.

“They aren’t the same Captain America and Bucky Barnes that they once were, Phil. They are ghosts of their former selves. We can’t forget that they are wired to be mindless killing machines,” Natasha said, not quite warmly.

Clint agreed deep down, but he couldn’t help but think wistfully of his Howling Commando heroes. Ultimately, his humanity won out. 

“But, they’re remembering. They know that they weren’t always like that,” Clint said. 

“I’m not sure they’ll ever fully recover,” Banner said carefully. He had been overseeing the detainees’ daily medical check-ins. “Their brains may not be able to fully heal from the damage done to the Hippocampus.”

“Plus, remember what happened last time they ‘remembered?’ They snapped. Boom goes the Hydra base,” Hill reminded them. 

“They are prisoners of war. For 70 goddamn years. We have to at least help them remember who they were,” Sam stressed.

Clint looked down at the table and picked at his nail bed. Here were two of the biggest heroes of the second World War, who also happened to be two of the greatest villains of the Cold War. It made him nauseous. He had to say something. He couldn’t let Bucky Barnes, his role model in life for crying out loud, rot in a jail cell. No matter how cushy Fury pretended the cell was.

“I think we should help them. SHIELD failed them for 70 years. The least we could do is to help them,” Clint said quickly.

Natasha glared at him. Then she softened. “Alright, I guess. But we have to ease them into their memories. If we tell them everything, it might overwhelm them, causing them to lash out.”

Coulson looked as if his eyes were going to bulge out of his head. “Just...not tell Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers who they are? Just leave them to be confused over who they really are?”

Clint nodded. This. Is. Insane, he thought.

"Then it's settled. We start rehabilitation tomorrow," Fury said. 

...

Beta awoke startled.

He’d had a dream from Before.

Usually, he had nightmares of The Chair, of The Chamber, of Komandir beating him bloody, or his henchmen baring their teeth at him, violating him in every way imaginable.

But, this time was different.

This time was a dream.

“I love you, Bucky.”

(He had been loved?)

(Who was Bucky?)

(Was _he_ Bucky?)

It was whispered by a small man, who looked immensely frail. Soft blond hair, piercing blue eyes--

And a face that looked just like Alpha’s.

Beta sat up the cot, bumping Alpha on the chin in the process. He patted his chin in reassurement, then focused in on Alpha.  
“I...I had a dream from Before.”

Alpha whipped his head around. It was rare, that they communicated in anything but taps on the cot, repeatedly telling each other, _you are safe. We are safe._

Alpha tilted his head towards the right, an invitation for Beta to continue.

“It was a man who had your face. But it wasn’t you; this man was smaller.”

Alpha’s eyes widened as he whispered, “What did he say?”

“I love you, Bucky. I think, I must have been Bucky once.”

At that, Alpha jumped up, fists quivering at his sides. Face contorted in an almost unhuman-like haunted shock.

“That...that was the name I remembered. That name is from my before,” he said, his voice wavering.

Beta stared. Was it possible, that he had once known Alpha? That Alpha was from Before?  
Or, he thought cynically, was it a false memory that Hydra had implanted?

It wouldn’t be the first time Hydra had done that. They had tried to make Beta believe that he had always been this way. Always been the asset.

But, then he had been out of the chair too long, and the voice had told him, _No. You were a man once._

“I’m not sure if it was real,” Beta said softly.

Alpha looked at him with silent disappointment, then nodded, and curled up to Beta’s thigh. It was his turn to sleep.

Beta strained to remember, remember, remember.

Suddenly, a man walked in the cage. Beta tensed, prepared for a fight. He had stopped biting after the first few days, but was prepared to do anything if they were going to take him away from Alpha again.

_Protect Alpha_ , screamed the voice.

“Hi,” the man began. “My name is Sam Wilson. I’m a therapist specializing in Veteran’s Affairs and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder management. I want to talk to you for a few minutes, get to know you. See how you’re adjusting.”

The man, Wilson, had a kind voice, and an outstretched hand. Beta decided that, no, he shouldn’t bite him. 

All the same, he shook his head. He could not leave Alpha. Alpha would be worried. 

“It’s okay,” Wilson said gently. “We aren’t taking you far. We definitely aren’t separating you from your friend for long. It will only take a few minutes. Do you want to come with me?” 

Beta stood up, wanting to comply. It was rare that he had a Komandir so gentle, so understanding. 

He followed Wilson to a room fifteen meters from the cell and sat down in the wooden chair. The room was beige, and filled with synthetic plants. In one corner was a piano. 

_You used to play piano_ , the voice supplied.

All of the sudden, he was bombarded with another memory of Before. This time, Beta could not discern a face among the blurry image. Only a voice.

“When we get married, you have to change your name to Buck Rogers.”

“Are you okay, man?” Wilson asked him, worry on his face.

“Yes,” Beta said. “I...I just remembered something from Before. But I’m not sure if it’s real.”

Wilson nodded. “What was it, if you don’t mind sharing?”

Beta thought carefully. How was he sure that he wouldn’t be put back in the chair for sharing this memory? 

Eventually, he looked up at Wilson. He could trust Wilson, Beta decided. He wasn’t sure he had ever trusted someone. Besides Alpha.

“A...A man. He told me that when we got married, I would change my name to Buck Rogers.”

Wilson was evidently surprised by that, but quickly schooled his face into a neutral expression. “What did you mean when you said you didn’t think it was real?”

Beta paused for a few seconds to come up with a suitable answer. “Sometimes, Hydra implanted false memories into our brains. They told us that we had always been the assets. But that is not true. I remember that there was a time Before.”

“What do you remember about the time before?” Wilson asked. 

“I think it is a false memory,” Beta said carefully.

“Still, I’d like to hear it, if you want to share,” Wilson said, nodding his head encouragingly.

Beta looked up into his eyes. “It was a man. He was frail and small, but he had the other soldier’s face. He told me, “I love you, Bucky.” But I do not believe it to be real because the other soldier remembered the Bucky. And though the man in my dream had the other soldier’s face, he did not have the other soldier’s build.”

Wilson nodded, his face unreadable. 

Suddenly, Beta was bombarded with another memory. There sat Alpha, looking younger, with short hair. He had the same face as the frail man, but he had the same build as Alpha. Instead of dressing in his tactical gear, he had on a red, white and blue suit. 

_Draw me a picture, Steve?_

_Sure thing, Bucky._

Before he knew it, Beta (Bucky?) was out of the chair, sprinting out of the room. It was real. He knew it, knew it from within. He had to find Alpha (Steve?). 

He crashed into the cell, eyes trained on Alpha (Steve). 

“I remember,” Beta (Bucky) breathed. “I remembered you from Before. Steve.”

“Bucky,” Steve whispered back in a prayer. “That’s who you are. You are Bucky.”

“Steve,” Bucky said. He moved his hand over Steve’s face, wiping away the water on his face. “Steve.”

“Bucky,” Steve repeated. “Bucky.”


	2. Chapter 2

As the only living Howling Commando, (besides Peggy, of course, who was an honorary Commando, but she barely remembered who she was nowadays) Gabe Jones got a lot of requests to make appearances at schools and book signings. Usually, he declined. 

“I’m 90 years old. Every day could be my last. Gotta live life on the wild side,” he’d tell them, chuckling.

Which is why today, he sighed as he answered the pounding knocks on his front door.

He didn’t particularly like living alone. Ever since his beautiful angel Mary died ten years ago, he’d refused his children’s offers to move in with them. And damned if he was going to live in a nursing home.

He was surprised that at the door were two SHIELD agents, dressed in black, with grim expressions on their faces. 

Though Gabe had never been involved with SHIELD, he had been involved with the SSR, and being a Commando was frequently invited to SHIELD gatherings. Hell, he was on a first name basis with Nick Fury. 

“Private Jones, I am Deputy Director Coulson, and this is Agent Hill. We’re from SHIELD, and we’re going to have to ask you to come with us,” the blond man said.

“Come where? I haven’t done nothing wrong, young man. I’m 90 years old, I’m too old to be running off to places,” Gabe scolded.

“Yes, we understand, but this situation is imperative. It would be in both of our best interests if you were to see for yourself,” the woman, Agent Hill, replied.

“See what for myself? You gonna tell me what the hell this is all about before you drag me off to who knows where?” Gabe demanded.

“Your house could be bugged. Better we do the debrief at the tower,” Agent Hill told him.

“The tower? The hell are you taking me, ma’am?”

“Avengers Tower in New York.”

“And why the hell am I going to do that for?”

The man, Coulson, looked at him solemnly. “We have some men who you’ll want to see.”

Gabe stared back at them, and knowing that this wouldn’t be a battle he’d win, sighed heavily. “Fine, I’ll come with you. But first, let me pack a bag. Might take a while, with my bad knees and all.”

As they arrived at the airport, a dozen agents clothed in black escorted Gabe to the awaiting private jet. It was nice, but the furtive glances shot his way were jarring. They landed soon after, and he was put in a limousine headed for Stark Tower. 

Gabe didn’t believe Fury at first. It was impossible. Sarge and Cap died 70 years ago. Gabe had been a kid when it happened. 

He didn’t believe it when Stark’s kid and the archer led him down to the basement floor, looking grim. 

He didn’t believe it until he saw two broken men, looking at each other as if only seeing the other for the first time, Barnes’ left-hand meeting Rogers’ left. Repeating each other’s names, as if they were afraid they would forget. 

These were not the Cap and Sarge he knew. These were two ghosts, using their bodies as host. 

Gabe Jones turned around and threw up. 

…

He learned his name was Steve. It felt rather foreign on his mouth at first, but it sounded oh so sweet when Bucky said it. Likewise, Steve loved to say Bucky’s name. 

He was learning the other’s names too. Names like Tony Stark. Steve was sure he had once known a Stark before, but that was a fuzzy memory, and Steve knew better from pressing.

It was paradoxical, really. He wanted to remember, he really did. But it was painful to chase them. Remembering led to headaches and nightmares and those episodes where his breathing rate would rapidly increase. HYDRA had neglected to train him for much self-maintenance, so he tried to limit these side effects as much as possible. 

The group whose custody they were in did not seem as concerned with orders so much as HYDRA. In fact, Steve could barely see a hierarchy at all. They told him that there was no Komandir, so Steve surmised that they each had a part ownership of he and Bucky. The way Steve saw it, their aim was to increase the soldats’ autonomy as much as possible. He reasoned that by giving them back their memories, they were installing kindness in the soldiers. Kindness led to trust, and with trust, it would be easier to do the group’s bidding.

The group called themselves the Avengers, but Steve was not sure what they were to avenge. A voice in the back of his head told him that he deserved to avenge, too. _Be angry for what they did to you,_ it said. Bucky said the voice in his head talked to him, too. The woman Steve was forced to talk to, who called herself a ‘therapist,’ said it was called a conscience. Steve didn’t know if he had a conscience Before, but he could tell that the conscience he had now was strong.

Steve was almost as sure of this as he was that Bucky had a strong conscience. He just seemed to know _more_. Nightly, Bucky would tell him a memory. He called them “bedtime stories.” They seemed warm and familiar in a way Steve couldn’t quite place. The memories weren’t concrete, though; Bucky only ever remembered a color, or a sound, or a smell. Either way, Steve was fine with it. “I remember peach-orange. Sweet smell,” Bucky would say softly.

Steve liked when Bucky talked softly. Bucky never got to talk softly with HYDRA; they always made him bark orders and whimper. Steve decided he knew too much of Beta and not enough Bucky. He much preferred Bucky.

The Beta was expressionless. Calculated, precise, and dangerous, but Steve also remembered little bits of Beta. Ones where he would smile at Steve and look at him and glare at the Komandir. This led to the chair, and unearthing these memories inevitably led to the headaches. So Steve tried to remember Before.

He didn’t remember scenes, but he started to remember something even better. He remembered how Bucky made him feel. When he thought of Bucky, he felt his heart flutter and he felt like smiling. At first, he thought he was suffering from heart palpitations, but that alleged conscience told him that it was how things should be.

It was at this point, he realized he loved Bucky. The conscience told him that it wasn’t a new feeling, but Steve didn’t care. He knew he loved Bucky, and he was more sure of this than of anything else. 

…

“Why don’t you tell me what you know?” asked the soft looking woman. She wore a brown knit wrap and glasses. Tony thought she looked exactly what a Super Soldier’s therapist should look like.

“From Before or During?” asked Steve, looking thoroughly unimpressed. It was a miracle that he was cooperating at all. During the past week, he’d been, well. Fussy. They’d refused to talk one day, and the next, they would whine and beg to leave. Sam said it was perfectly normal to test their boundaries after not having autonomy for sixty years. Clint said to Tony afterward that it made it sound like Steve and Bucky were toddlers, and Tony didn’t exactly disagree. 

“You classify the periods of your life between before and during?” Karen-the-therapist inquired. Karen was a find of Sam’s. They’d tried four different therapists on Steve before he settled on Karen. Bucky was still getting there, but then again, he tended to dispose of everything after two or three uses. Sam speculated that there was some deeper meaning, that it signified that he had a deep mistrust imprinted by HYDRA. Privately, Tony thought he was just finicky.

“Yes,” Steve mumbled, not meeting her eyes. Steve was doing the thing again, where he displayed a flicker of emotion before settling back into his blank eyes and expressionless face routine. It frustrated Tony to no end. It tricked them all into thinking, hey, he’s making progress. But it was fleeting. When Tony complained about it to Sam, he launched into his philosophy pitch, how progress isn’t linear, blah blah blah. It bored Tony endlessly. 

Bucky was different. Bucky seemed to be making no progress. Sam worried that it was because he wasn’t settling on a therapist, to which Tony reminded him that he wasn’t his mom, and it wasn’t his job to worry about the Blunder Twins. Sam had rolled his eyes so far back, Tony was worried he’d gotten them stuck.

“I think this is a learning moment, Steve,” Karen said soothingly, which was really just her regular speaking voice. “You classify your life into before and during when really it’s before, then, and now. You’ve made it past HYDRA, Steve. You’ve made it here.”

To this, Steve narrowed his eyes. Oh great, one of his top three facial expressions, Tony thought. 

 

“HYDRA, they, they put us in that chair when they wanted us to forget,” Steve began wildly. Tony sat up behind the glass window he was required to sit behind. “When we fell, they dragged us to their base. They cut Buck’s arm off...with a chainsaw. Made me watch. No. Made me help,” he continued. 

_Jesus._

“Then they locked me in a room for weeks. It was pitch black. They would feed me, but not often and then they whipped me and told me to tell them where things were. But I couldn’t help them. I ain’t no traitor,” Steve said. He sounded so...distinctly Brooklyn that Tony wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. 

“Almost chopped my balls off. I wouldn’t let ‘em. Then they shoved me in a tiny ass jail cell with Buck. Made us train and run around. Taught us to shoot. But I wouldn’t do it. So they took Bucky away and put him in that fucking chair and made him forget me. It hurt so much I let them do it to me, too,” he said, slumping back in his chair. Karen, to her credit, managed to look nonplussed. 

“You wouldn’t do it?”

Whatever remnants of a personality Steve had just displayed were gone; he was back to blank. 

“I wouldn’t shoot anyone before.”

Karen smiled at him like he just solved world hunger. “That’s who you are, Steve. Inherently, you are noble and, and nonviolent. This is real progress, Steve. You’re remembering who you are, and that’s really great. I’m proud of you, Steve. I think this display proves that you’re up to moving into your own room. Wouldn’t you agree, Tony?”

Tony glanced up. Sure, he knew this whole “therapy session” was really a ploy to evaluate if Steve and Bucky were ready to move out of the cell, but Tony was surprised Karen acknowledged him, knowing how she felt about the violations of doctor-patient confidentiality that Fury insisted upon. Fury wanted a third party in the room to intervene in case Steve became violent again, and Tony didn’t disagree. 

“Yeah, Cap van Winkle. You just won your very own keys to an apartment, courtesy of Stark Tower!”

Steve looked at him blankly. Tony sighed. Baby steps.

…

Bucky smiled. He finally remembered his last name. _Barnes_. It had taken what seemed like weeks, although the calendar he kept told him it was only eleven days. Overall, it had been seventeen days since his successful escape from HYDRA, and sixteen days since his capture by SHIELD. 

“Capture,” may have been too strong a word. He had seemingly full autonomy. Well, except for the cell he was forced to sleep in. And the protein shakes he was forced to eat. And the injections that were shoved into his arm as he was restrained. 

But he wasn’t bitter.

The therapist that SHIELD made him see encouraged what he called “civil disobedience.” He told Bucky to refuse orders at least once a day. It was what he deserved. 

The Avengers hated it when he refused to cooperate, but Bucky liked it. It reminded him of Before. Always the heartbreaker, the voice said.

His therapist was concerned with two things now: Bucky’s personality and Bucky’s hobbies. Namely, how Bucky did not have a personality or hobbies. Truthfully, Bucky knew that in the past, he had those things, but he couldn’t remember what they were. He knew that he could start with a new personality and hobbies, but what good would that do? Honestly, he just wanted to be who he was in the past. He wanted to be the old Bucky Barnes, for his sake and for Steve’s. 

It was undeniable that his new supervisors kept a close eye on him, though. They were fearful of him; he could sense it in their body language, how they crept around him as if not to provoke him. Frankly, Bucky found it ridiculous. If he was going to kill them, he would have already done it. No, he quite enjoyed his new setup. 

It felt empty though. He felt like a shell of a person, a blank template, a ghost. A ghost of a person who had departed from this earth long ago. Yes, he shared the same name and features as that Sergeant (was that what he was in the American Army? Was he even in the American Army?). Other than that, James Buchanan Barnes was dead.

…

No one had thought to contact Becca Barnes.

Fuck. _No one had thought to contact Becca Barnes!_

To be honest, Phil forgot she was still alive. After he’d attended Anna Barnes’s funeral in 2004 and Eleanor Barnes’s funeral three years later, he’d sort of just forgot about the third Barnes sister. Ironic, because she’d always been the most outspoken one. 

He’d met the Barnes girls on accident. Becca was good friends with Peggy Carter, and when Phil was a junior agent in the main SHIELD office, he’d had to escort her to and from Peggy’s office. At the time, he’d made the usual comments: “I’m so sorry for your loss. Your family has made the ultimate sacrifice to this country. Sergeant Barnes lives on in our hearts and through our memories. He’s looking down on us all.”

Becca’d rolled her eyes at these quips. “Please, son. Don’t pity me. My brother has been gone 30 years. He’s been gone more than half my life.”

She’d always left an impression on him that she was one strong motherfucker. And he surely admired a strong will. So when Gabe Jones asked when Becca Barnes was coming in, Phil felt like a complete joke.

Swallowing his fear and pride, he picked up the phone and dialed the number Gabe begrudgingly provided. 

“Hello?” 

“Hi, is this Rebecca Barnes-Proctor?”

He could feel the glare he was getting. His face burned with shame. “Yes, this is she. May I ask who’s calling,” she asked, faking casualty. 

“This...this is Phil Coulson, deputy director of SHIELD. I’m calling in regards to a matter concerning your brother James,” he said as calmly as he could.

“Oh, is that it? What matter, then?”

This is it. “We...we at SHIELD...we regret...oh, no...we need to...we express…,” stammered Phil.

“For fuck’s sake, son. Spit it out.”

“Your brother is still alive,” Phil said in a jumble of words. 

“I don’t appreciate crank-callers. Especially not ones degrading my brother’s reputation. He fought for this country,” she said angrily.

“Yes, ma’am. I know. But this isn’t a crank call. I got your number from Private Gabriel Jones? He wanted me to break the news to you.”

“Sir, frankly, it is impossible for my brother to be alive. I don’t know why I’m still on the line listening to such bullshi..”

“We found him and Steve Rogers in a HYDRA base,” he interrupted. “I can’t tell you any more information, as it’s classified, but I can give you an address where you can meet me and ask more questions.”

As she sat in a stunned silence, Phil wondered if there were ways where he could disappear into the floor.  
…

They were finally letting him train.

The agent called Natasha led him to the well-equipped facility. With HYDRA, he had liked to train with Bucky, but as he was in his therapist appointment, Steve was left to train alone. The equipment was unfamiliar, though. HYDRA had only provided them elastic bands. For the rest of their training, they were required to run and train with their weapons. Steve had taken a liken to the guns, while Bucky preferred the knives. The Avengers obviously would not let them train with weapons. 

Natasha waited patiently while Steve scouted out the room filled with weights. He had grown out of checking for bugs after the first week (he was certain that SHIELD was nearly more secure than HYDRA), but Natasha seemed to be expecting it, so Steve acted the part.

Finally, he settled on a weighted leather sac hanging from the ceiling. Confused, he turned towards Natasha, who gave him a quirked smile in return. “It’s a punching bag,” she said. “You punch it when you’re angry. Here, let me show you.” Gently, she wrapped his knuckles in an odd mesh-like tape and mimed punching it, each fist taking turns rapidly striking the bag. He mimicked her motions, sending the bag flying.

He wasn’t sure how long he trained with the bag, for when he turned back around, Natasha was engaged in a quiet conversation with the agent named Clinton Barton, who preferred to be called Clint. Having been trained by HYDRA to be as observant as was possible, he noticed that as much as Natasha was shrewd, Clint was brash. They seemed to be polar opposites, but they worked in such a way that they perfectly complemented each other. Noticing that Steve had halted his training, they approached him. 

“So, Cap, how was your first punching-bag sesh?” Clint asked.

“It sufficed,” Steve replied.

Clint didn’t seem satisfied, but he pressed no further. 

“Actually,” Steve blurted out, “I miss weapon training. I looked forward to that with HYDRA.”

Clint and Natasha looked conflicted. Steve immediately regretted it; he had no idea what compelled him to say it, but the secret was out. After a beat, Clint looked back at him. “We can’t let you have weapons, but I have the next best thing. Wait here.”

As Clint rushed out of the room, Steve turned back to Natasha, who looked as puzzled as he felt. After nine minutes, he returned with a circular disc and a grin. 

Clint looked at him expectantly. Steve gingerly picked it up. It was painted in red and white rings surrounding a blue center that contained a star. 

_I’ll hold them off, Dum Dum, you take the men out of here._

Suddenly, Steve was bombarded with a memory of a younger, leaner, short-haired version of himself wielding the very disc he now possessed. The version of himself wore a frankly ridiculous suit and wore a serious expression on his face. Surrounding him was the Dum Dum, a mustachioed man a few years older than him, a wiry man of Asian descent, and best of all, a younger version of Bucky.

“It’s a shield!” Clint said, snapping Steve out of his memory. 

“I remembered,” Steve said to Natasha. An unexpected expression of glee shown in eyes, one that matched Clint’s beaming smile.

It struck Steve at that moment that this was as important to them as it was to him. Clint had known that it belonged to him: why was that?  
_So, are you ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?_

Shocked, he dropped the shield as if it were infected. 

In HYDRA’s custody, he and Bucky were taught to hate Captain America. Their Komandir told them that Captain America was the enemy and that he resembled evil and injustice. Steve had hated Captain America with every inch of his being. It had never even occurred to him that Captain America was a real person.

Much less himself.

Steve focused back on Natasha and Clint, who looked supremely worried. “I am Captain America?” Steve asked.

Natasha nodded, and Steve exhaled. “They made me hate him,” he said, not elaborating further. They exchanged an uneasy glance, as Steve picked up the shield once more. Turning it over in his hands, he felt the smooth ridges, smelled the faint metallic scent. It struck him that this must be a replica because the original had been much heavier. Finally, he looked back up towards the two anxious faces. 

“It’s mine,” he said. “I want to keep it.”

…

“At least they remember who they are now,” the Stark boy said to her as she climbed out of her chair. “At first, they didn’t even know their names. But they had a big ole epiphany, with tears and hugs, and they remember their first names!”

Becca was strongly contemplating smacking him with her purse. Or her cane, she hadn’t decided. 

“We’ve...the psychologists have just decided that they are ready for new visitors of you and Gabe’s nature. Like, one’s that remind them of the past? So we just want to prepare you,” began the nervous-looking man. 

“If they become violent, someone will intervene. Likewise, if either of you become violent, someone will intervene,” said the tall woman. Becca snorted.

“They may not remember you. You have to prepare yourself for that,” the nervous man said solemnly. “They tend not to show many...indications that they’re people?”

In truth, Becca was terrified. She hadn’t seen her brother in seventy years, and after hearing what was done to him? Yeah, not great. 

The last memory she had of him was waving him off when he was shipping out to Europe. Becca didn’t cry, but Bucky shed enough tears for both of them. She was 22. Annie and Eleanor both sobbed for hours, talked about how brave and patriotic their big brother was. Becca didn’t. Becca had been more reserved than either of them.

Her last memory of Steve was the next day. As much as Annie and Bucky were alike (emotional, playful, cheerful, loving), her and Steve might as well have been soulmates. They were reserved, quiet, calculating. Despite the similarities, there was resentment there. It was one-sided, but it was there. Anyone would expect two siblings so close in age to be best of friends, but Steve was already that for Bucky, leaving Becca in the dust. Sure, she and Steve got along like a house on fire, but that didn’t save her from the jealousy.

The last time she saw Steve, he gave her a key to their apartment. Told her he was skipping town, and to not tell anyone. Gave her a hug, and he was off. He’d sent a few letters here and there, and all of the sudden he was in Europe with Bucky all big and strong, and a year later they were both gone. 

After they got the telegram, it took a whole week to gain the courage to clean out their apartment. It was decided that she and Annie would clean it out. After four hours of boxing, she found the incriminating piece of evidence: the box of letters, drawings, and pictures that cried out, in no uncertain terms, that her brother and Steve Rogers were queer. 

Annie took it in stride. Thought it was a Romeo and Juliet type tragedy. For once, Becca agreed. She didn’t care that her brother was an invert; the love he had for Steve was sure more than David had for Becca. But Becca was marrying David, and Bucky was dead, so it looked like God cared after all. 

Becca got married to David, and Annie got married to Phil, and Eleanor got married to Johnny Johnson, and the box remained a secret between Annie and Becca. Until Peggy Carter knocked on Becca’s door five years after the war. Peggy’d invited herself in, made them both a coffee and offered Becca a job. She’d just had Jimmy, and there was no way David wanted her to work. She accepted, of course. When she asked Peggy why she’d offered her the job, she said that she felt bad. Becca rolled her eyes, and that was how that friendship was born. 

A year into the friendship and Becca was pregnant again. Jimmy was fussy, and David was at the bar, of course. So Peggy came over to watch Jimmy. As she’d stirred the milky tea, she raised her eyes to Becca. 

“I know Steve was in love with him.”

Becca had nodded in agreement, and that was all they spoke of it until Annie had to go and show her blabbermouth at the Commando picnic in ‘66. By then, they were aging. Their kids had kids or were getting married. Somehow, the topic of queers got thrown in. Angry debating raged, and then Anne of Green Gables spilled the beans. “Well, Jim, I don’t think you’d be doing that much bad mouthing of queers if you knew my brother and Steve were queer,” she told Morita plainly. Every single eye stared at her. Dugan grew angry and hotly disagreed. Morita looked green in the gills with astonishment. Gabe bowed his head, though did not refute it. Dernier looked thoroughly unimpressed. Falsworth looked around in amusement. 

Eleanor did not speak to either of them for two years because of the withheld secret. She told Becca later, in confidence, that she was disgusted her brother was a pervert. Becca tried not to roll her eyes.

One by one, the Howlies, who had previously disinvited her and Annie to the picnic, called to apologize. First was Gabe, who called a week after the incident and confessed he knew the whole time, but didn’t want to shock the two. They laughed, and then they cried over their brothers. Becca had always liked Gabe the best. Then was Falsworth, whose own drag queen son convinced him that “homos were alright.” That was a month after Gabe. Dernier was next, then Morita and eventually even Dum Dum. They barely spoke of it again, although Becca was sure she could make a pretty penny from a tell-all book. 

David died at age 55. She was used to living on her own, but Jimmy insisted on driving her everywhere nowadays. Carrie was no better. She’d taken to calling them chauffeurs. She joked that at her age, her travel events were to exclusively funerals, which made her kids blanch. 

She’d lived her whole life shrouded in funerals, from the time she’d attended Sarah Rogers at age 15 to now. Her brother’s struck her as the worst. It was stuffy, with random strangers going up to her, telling her how’d they’d loved Bucky Barnes, always thought he was the best man from Brooklyn Heights, when she knew that they’d beaten him up four weeks before he shipped off for looking at them weird. Although, she guessed it didn’t matter in the long run.

Becca, Gabe, and the agents came to a halt in front of a lofty door. Becca let go of Gabe’s elbow and turned to the Stark boy. 

“I don’t want funny business from you. Understand?”

He nodded respectfully, a smirk on his face. 

“Now, as for the procedures,” began the tall woman. “You can’t make any indication that you know them. We fear that if this may trigger them to become violent, much as they did in the HYDRA facility in Ljubljana.”

Becca frowned. “What kind of crockshit plan is that?”

The woman reciprocated the frown. “What do you mean, Mrs. Proctor?” she asked sharply.  
Becca sighed, then gave her a sardonic smile. “I haven’t seen my brothers in decades. I’m afraid that I won’t go along with your little plan. They deserve to know who they are, agent. I think Private Jones agrees with me?” she said, looking to Gabe. As he nodded, the Agent pursed her lips, gave a curt nod, and turned back to the door.

“Just, be prepared.”

…

Bucky was having what his fifth therapist called, “a rotten day.” He liked this therapist more than the others. The others were too sterile. They reminded him of HYDRA scientists. Mickey was different because he wore bowties. HYDRA would never have let anyone wear something as arbitrary as a bowtie.

The people who had rescued him and Steve explained it to him. They wanted them to talk to therapists and tell them the information they had gathered from HYDRA. Astoundingly, they didn’t punish Bucky if he refused to comply. They frowned, though, and told him how sad it was that he was having a rotten day. To which he frowned back, and told them that every day was a rotten day. 

The agents told him that they’d been there a month. They finally approved of letting Bucky and Steve have their own apartment, so long as they were on their best behavior. They also stipulated that they meet with their therapists once a day. Mickey wasn’t so bad, so Bucky agreed. 

Everything seemed fine and dandy, except Bucky’s memory. He remembered bits and pieces of Before. All he knew is that he lived in a house, with a mom and a dad and three sisters. Then, he was living with Steve. Then, he was fighting, and then, he fell. That’s what he remembered.

Steve was no better. Steve could remember the little bits, but not the big bits like who his mom was. Steve told him the little fragments like bedtime stories. How the two of them shined shoes until a cat drank all their shoe polish. How Steve got a black eye from falling out of a window. Bucky was mildly amused by the anecdotes, but was sad that Steve couldn’t remember more.

Now, Steve was painting, and Bucky was sitting. Steve remembered yesterday that he liked art, so the agents rushed out and bought him art supplies. Bucky couldn’t remember his hobbies, but Mickey said that was okay, he could make new hobbies. But Bucky didn’t want new hobbies. He wanted his old life back.

At least it was only a rotten day. Rotten days were better than the days when he remembered too much HYDRA. Those days gave him a pounding, metal through skull headache, made him shake all over, made him cry. He tried his best to not remember HYDRA, much to the therapists’ chagrin. Steve had one of those days yesterday. Steve tended to lash out at everyone but Bucky during those days. Bucky closed in on himself. 

With a syrupy sweet grin, an agent with curly blonde hair approached Bucky. “Hi, Bucky. There’s a special visitor here to see you today!” she chirped. Bucky looked at her blankly, then looked up at the door. Four people strode into the foyer; two top-level agents and two elderly people, looking at him with saucer eyes. 

“Oh my god,” whispered the old man. 

Bucky stared at them expectantly. They stared right back. He felt a familiar tug in his chest, like he was supposed to know these people. Steve appeared at his right, and looked at the two old people with a disinterested gaze. 

The woman took a seat on the ottoman opposite Bucky and Steve and gave them a level stare. “My name is Rebecca Barnes. I am your sister,” she told Bucky.

Bucky considered this. He had remembered his sisters the other day. All younger than him, all with fiery personalities, but he was unable to distinguish them from one another. He thought hard. Becca, Annie, Ellie. “Becca, Annie, Ellie,” he told her. 

“You remember me?” she asked, startled.

“No.”

She seemed angry at this, but said nothing else. The man next to her held out his hand to them both for some reason. Bucky wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do with that, so he chose to ignore it.

“I’m Gabe. Jones. You two served with me in the War. Back about sixty years ago.”

Bucky looked at Steve, then looked back at Gabe Jones. He didn’t remember, and frankly found it surprising that he had once served with someone so old. Had he really been a captive for sixty years?

Steve turned back to his painting, and Bucky followed. He was having a rotten day; he didn’t need ghosts from his past telling him who he was on top of that.

…

“Well, they seem to be making major improvements,” Maria said. Natasha nodded in agreement. 

“I can’t believe they’re alive,” Rebecca whispered. “Both of them, back together, it’s…”

“It’s remarkable,” finished Gabe, clutching her hand in his. “They’re the same, but they’re not.”

Natasha agreed. They had bits of personality here and there. They generally regarded the Avengers in a cold disinterest, but stared at each other as if the moon rose and set on the other. It made Natasha question what the exact nature of their relationship was because the bond they shared almost seemed too strong to be platonic.

Suddenly, soft music emanated from the room where Bucky and Steve were. It sounded as if were coming from the ivory piano. The room quieted as they strained to hear the faint chimes.

“That’s Bucky!” whispered Becca, whose eyes were suspiciously wet. “Ave Maria. We...we used to joke that was the only song he knew.”

Gabe chuckled. “You should have seen the number of times Bucky played that for Steve. Every night. It was like a cat trying to woo its mate.”

Rebecca smiled brightly at this. “It was a cat trying to woo his mate,” she said, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. 

“They were together?” Phil asked softly.

Gabe and Rebecca shared a look, then nodded. “Yeah, they were. We didn’t find out till after they were both...gone,” Rebecca said, her voice tinged with sadness.

Gabe continued. “We don’t know how long they were together, don’t know whether or not they were exclusive. All we know is we found love letters and they sounded way more than friendly, if you know what I mean.”

Natasha pondered this. The famous Captain America was gay for his best friend. She wondered if Bucky and Steve knew what they were to one another, once upon a time. She got her answer when Sam looked up from his coffee. 

“They remembered. That they were together. Bucky told me that Steve told him that when the two of them got married, he would be called Buck Rogers,” he replied.

Becca seemed to be satisfied by this, because she leaned back into Gabe, smiled her sardonic smile, and burst into tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Stay tuned for the next chapter, which should be up sometime during the week. Thanks to all who have left a review.


	3. Chapter 3

After a two month long stay at casa de tortured-super soldier, Tony was growing restless. Pepper, God bless her, had suggested a vacation, but Fury, God damn him, had not approved. So here he wait, watching these two sad saps try to remember their soap opera-esque pasts. 

It was entertaining, in a fucked-up sort of way. Not that Tony would ever, ever admit that to anyone. It would get him flogged by Sam Wilson, and Sam could be a scary dude when he wanted to be. No, Tony firmly clamped his mouth shut on that. But a small part of him looked forward to the rare occasions he was assigned to watch them. They were so blunt in their demands that it was like dealing with a toddler. Bucky, for instance, had requested a steak for breakfast last week, and when he was denied it, he sulked in the corner for almost an hour. Tony had almost sworn that Steve had smirked at Bucky while he ate his cereal. 

For all the hope that Steve and Bucky remembering gave the Avengers, it also created massive problems. Like the fact that Steve and Bucky were growing restless being kept inside of a cell twenty hours out of the day. They were increasing self-aware, and 

Pepper had been making noise about getting them their own room upstairs like the Avengers. Said it was “inhumane” to keep them locked in a basement. Tony didn’t necessarily agree or disagree, but publicly he’d endorsed Pepper’s idea to appease her.

Privately, Tony could see how it could go wrong. The two were still in a majorly fragile state. No amount of therapy and smiling nurses could change the fact that they’d been tortured for a million years. And it showed daily. Because inevitably, one of the two would wake up screaming, and the other would scream themselves to sleep. The therapists, bound by their death oath to never break patient-doctor confidentiality, would only wax poetic about the “progress” they were making, and how recovery was not “linear.” Frankly, if Tony heard that line one more time, he’d shove something non-linear up someone's ass.

What made matters worse was Natasha’s departure. Fury sent her on an excursion to look for HYDRA facilities in Russia, and retrieve any evidence of what the Winter Soldiers had been through. So far, she hadn’t found anything. With her gone, there was one less vetted guard to watch the soldiers. Barton was unreliable at best, having gone on several missions since they’d found Steve and Bucky. Fury, Hill, and Coulson also couldn’t be trusted, as they were busy doing executive stuff. Thor was on another planet. Bruce was not allowed in the basement as a Hulk-out precaution. And Tony absolutely refused to let Pepper be alone with Steve and Bucky. That left Sam and Tony as the only two people in the world who were allowed to watch over the two. Tony had begged Fury to let the doctors or interns or janitors to watch them, but Fury had stared at him in disbelief. Tony took it as a solid maybe.

“Stark. I’ve got news.”

Speak of the devil.

“Director Fury. How kind of you to drop in on me and my roommates. Thing One and Thing Two,” Tony said, pointing to Steve and Bucky respectively.

Ignoring him, Fury continued. “We—Agent Hill, Agent Coulson, and I—have come to a decision.”

“On what?” Tony said, acting as politely as he wanted to.

“We have decided to allow Sergeant Barnes and Captain Rogers to move out of their holding facility down here, and into their own room, provided that they continue to make progress and see their therapists.”

Tony pondered this. “So, you’re saying that you think they’re safe enough to live upstairs?”

Fury nodded. “They haven’t been violent in weeks. They show no signs of wanting to harm us or our cause. I feel that we need to treat them with basic human decency.”

_Wow,_ thought Tony. _That sure is a different tune than “lock ‘em up in the basement.”_

“Sounds perfect,” Tony told Fury. “I’ll finally have my lab back.”

…

Somewhere in the distance, Bucky heard a faint chirping noise, and then, a distinct Brooklyn accent.

“Where in the hell do these Avengers keep their masking tape?”  
A light smile tinged Bucky’s face. It was his sister, Becca. Becca had taken it upon herself to come by every Thursday to talk his and Steve’s ears off. It was incredibly entertaining. She talked about their childhood, her adulthood, surmised about what went on in HYDRA, the works. She was a comforting sort of presence; her voice was soothing, and she was mildly entertaining. 

She would frequently launch into candid, decadent stories of their shared childhood, which seemed so far away now. Bucky wasn’t likely to remember, but Becca took that in stride. Often, he didn’t have enough context to whatever event she was recounting that day, and it was entertaining to imagine fantastical scenarios that might have caused whatever happened.

So far, Bucky surmised that he had been the first born. He knew he had three sisters, but he was unaware of other siblings. 

Sometimes, Becca’s stories caused him to remember something on his own. This was rare, and it was traumatic. It happened to Steve, too. Steve’d get a faraway look, his eyes unfocused and his shoulders slumped. When it happened to Bucky, it usually meant that Becca’s visit was over. She didn’t like when he did that.

Today, Becca was gabbing about a movie, mostly to herself. 

“You and Steve wouldn’t take me. Damn, was I mad. So, so mad!”

What Bucky had taken away most from the stories was that Steve was always in them. He had no clue how they’d met, no clue why’d they were friends, no clue. 

It had struck Bucky a while back that they’d been lovers. It was one of the first things he’d remembered, besides the HYDRA business. When he’d remembered, he couldn’t rationalize how he’d ever forgotten. It was so obvious, so plain. It was like realizing that you had an arm you were previously unaware of. How do you forget that? 

The more Bucky reflected back on it, the angrier he got. He and Steve had been a single entity, two that became one, forever and ever, ‘til death do them part, until the end of the line. Those words had been spoken in an oath, and he couldn’t even remember why or when because of fucking HYDRA. 

“Becca?” Bucky asked softly.

Becca turned around, startled. Bucky immediately regretted speaking, for disturbing the quiet. This wasn’t how these visits worked. They were Becca talking and Bucky pretending to understand. Not a two-sided conversation.

Becca, however, was cool under the duress. She merely cocked her head, inviting him to speak, but Bucky couldn’t. There were too many words fighting to come out, and Bucky had to collect his thoughts. Finally, he was sure.

“You never knew that I was in love.”

She hadn’t. Bucky didn’t know why, but he knew that she hadn’t been keen on him and Steve. It seemed important to tell her.

“I know, sunshine. We found out after you two fell off that damn train. Not very good at hiding your stuff, I’ll tell you that. Looking back, I can’t believe you had me and Annie fooled.”

Bucky pondered this. “Why didn’t you know?”

Becca stared at him and sighed, her eyes full of pity. “Things were different back then. It was hard for you and Stevie, and it was best for you to keep it secret. A man being with another man could’a gotten you killed in Brooklyn back then.”

“So we...kept it secret?” 

Becca nodded, her eyes not quite meeting his. Suddenly, Bucky found himself curious. He had so many questions, and finally a vessel to answer them.

“How did I meet Steve?”

Becca looked horrified. “You mean, you don’t know?”

Bucky shook his head, feeling immensely stupid. 

Becca closed her eyes and sat down, looking faint. “Bucky, Bucky, Bucky.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky said softly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“No. No. You didn’t hurt me. Not at all. Don’t you ever apologize, Bucky. You didn’t do this to yourself.”

Wordlessly, Bucky sat beside her. She snaked a hand into his and peered at him over her half-moon glasses. 

“You have been dealt a very shitty hand in life, Bucky Barnes.”

She took a deep breath to steady herself, and then continued her monologue: “Sometimes, I feel like I’m in a nightmare. You’d think I was the luckiest girl in the whole world. My own big brother, back from the dead! But the things you and Steve have gone through, Bucky I-”

Now, Rebecca was crying, tears falling freely onto Bucky’s shoulder. “You went through all of that, and now you can’t even remember your childhood. You don’t remember me, you don’t remember the war...it’s all just a fleeting memory compared to HYDRA, huh?”

She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. Silently, she kissed the top of his forehead.

“You used to do that when I was small. You’d say, ‘Becca girl, don’t you dare cry on me.’ And that made it all better.”

She gave him a sad smile, then looked back at the box she’d abandoned.

“Look at me. Today was supposed to be a happy day, and I’ve gone and ruined it.”

“It was?” Bucky asked.

“No one told you that you and Steve are moving out of this hell-hole?” 

Bucky shook his head.

“Some communication job these Avengers do. Peggy’d have their heads if she was still in charge,” Becca muttered.

Bucky’s ears perked up. “Peggy? You mean you know Peggy?”

Becca looked gleefully astonished. “You remember her?”

“Steve had a dream the other night about a woman named Peggy. I didn’t know who it was, but maybe it was the same woman,” Bucky said quietly.

Becca smiled at the ground. “I’ll bet a million dollars it was the same Peggy. Peggy Carter.” Then, she sobered. “Peggy’s got dementia now. Very frail in her old age. She’d remember you just as much as you’d remember her, I reckon.”

Bucky silently nodded. Becca gave him a quirked half-smile, obviously emotional from the conversation, then turned back to the boxes she’d presumably been packing. “Well, we’d better hurry up. Can’t let the Stark boy pack up Stevie’s stuff before us.”

 

…  
Natasha was startled. 

That was a rare event. She thought, humbly, that she was one of the most collected people out there. Time and again, Fury had expressed his trust of her when dealing with difficult situations. Such as this one.

Clint was with her, and predictably, he was in a moderately worse state than her. The day’s events were hazy, but she clearly remembered his retching when they had discovered the dead bodies. Corpses, rotting in chambers not unlike the chambers Rogers and Barnes had been kept in. 

Clint wanted to investigate these further, but they had been sent there to gather intelligence, not clean up a homicide scene. So, they went on their way. 

Now, back at the hotel/makeshift intelligence analyzation base, they were sifting through the hundreds of files they’d retrieved. The files dated back to 1943, and provided a startlingly clear synopsis of the creation of the Winter Soldiers. 

“Fuck,” Clint muttered for the hundredth time that day. “They...they used electroshock on them?”

Natasha refrained from rolling her eyes. Instead, she turned to him and studied his weary face, lined with worry.

“I have my suspicions that there are more HYDRA bases out there,” she said.

Clint leaned back in his chair and pondered this. 

“You’re probably right, you know. The files allude to them being transferred somewhere else, but I just don’t know where,” Clint said as he stood up and started to pace.

Natasha went back to her files, which detailed the process HYDRA had used to brainwash Steve and Bucky. It was enlightening, and Natasha knew it could be incredibly important in their recovery. Although she tried to read it with a clinical mindset, she couldn’t help but picture the Steve and Bucky she had seen in the past few weeks. They barely resembled the two mindless killing machines that had been captured two months ago. They were talking, they were laughing, they were opinionated, and they had memories. Not only that, but they had developed discernible personalities. 

“So.” 

Natasha turned back to face Clint, who gave her a smirk in return. “You’re going to look for more HYDRA bases.”

“Maybe.”

It was just too alluring an opportunity to turn down. Based on HYDRA’s hold on the soldiers during the Cold War, and the countless HYDRA bases in Russia, there had to be some connection with the Red Room. There just had to be.

Part of Natasha hungered for any information, any key that might unlock her past, but another part of her was terrified at what she might find. After seeing the horrors of what the Winter Soldiers went through, odds were that she went through similar.

“And you’re going alone, I bet,” Clint said, rousing Natasha from her spiraling thoughts.

She smiled back at him, though rather thinly. “Not if you come with me.”

Clint said nothing, but the smile on his face as he stared at his rust-colored boots told Natasha all she needed to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Better to post late than never, right?
> 
> Thank you for the kudos and comments. Your support means more than you know!

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this entire chapter in a single night four months ago, and only now have I worked up the courage to publish. I'd wanted to write an Alternative Universe where Steve falls off the train with Bucky, and it all sort of snowballed from there. Please leave kudos and a review, but go easy on me because this is my first work on Ao3.


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